How to Write an Addendum for Law School
- 1). Read over a completed application form and accompanying papers. Look for any red flags that might cause a review committee to take a negative position and end up rejecting the application. If there are none, then an addendum might not be needed. However, examples of weaknesses are a low GPA or marginal scores on the ACT, SAT or the LSAT exams. You might need to explain why you have mediocre scores in standardized testing but have high grades in class performance. Find any deficiency that you have in either verbal or logical skills. Be sure to note any below average or failing grade in a course appearing in the undergraduate transcript.
- 2). Make a list of all weaknesses that you find and write down good reasons why they were not stronger. Delete those that cannot be justified. Since committee members are human and have had problems in their own lives, they do consider problems in others. Examples of acceptable reasons are a family emergency such as sickness or death, a sudden poor health condition caused by personal illness or an accident, and a financial set-back necessitating in temporarily securing full-time employment. Any one of these could be a cause for having a poor semester, failing grade, or a gap in semester continuity.
- 3). Write the truth about the reason for any problem that, at the time, was out of your control. A committee will arrive quickly at identifying anything false. Keep away from making excuses, for example, of writing that low grades in the freshman year were caused by too much partying; grades then were improved in following semesters after the partying stopped. Or, it was a girl friend's fault when she made life miserable after an argument causing an important class to be skipped.
- 4). In writing the final draft, start with the title "Addendum." Write from one to three paragraphs depending upon the length that is needed. Keep what you put in focused and short -- you do want each member of the committee to read all that you have written. Include documentation if it will strengthen your position, such as, an official standardized test score if you want to show a problem or a hospital report with dates if you missed a class because of illness. Make the addendum a convincing statement that you are the kind of student that the school is seeking.